From today onward, I’ll be joining in the ‘On my mind’ photo feature from Down To Earth. It’s one of my favourite blogs, full of inspiration. The idea is to post a photo of what is on your mind that day.

Like most mums, I have a million things on my mind today. Can we get the man who pumps septic tanks to visit us soon? I’m sure at this time of year he’s very busy! However, my partner and I are keen to get ours emptied soon in this cold weather.

We have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, as my carer support worker and Phams worker cleverly picked up that I’m getting depression (occupational hazard, I’m told). I’m looking forward to getting some much needed medication and feeling better for it.

But what I’m thinking about most of all, is how much I can’t wait to sit down tonight and over the weekend to finish this jacket for Missy 3. I’m in the process of designing an ultra simple, ultra fast pattern for this so I can run a jacket up within hours in future. If it works out well, of course I’ll share the pattern.

I’m finding it’s getting easier to find the time to knit, these days. Of course I’m busier than I’ve ever been, but I love knowing that my kids are now old enough that I can knit whilst they’re awake without inquisitive fingers unravelling the yarn from the needles. I love that our cat Sookie is old enough now not to play with the yarn as I knit (but I still can’t leave it on the bench for a second or he’ll rip it to shreds! I learnt this the hard way when I was designing a beautiful pair of knitted gloves for my mother!)

I also find being a mother, I appreciate my crafting time so much more than I did when I was single. Time in general is more precious now, definitely. Especially time enjoying doing something I love.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend, and that you leave me a comment to let me know what’s on your mind.

There’s just one little glitch: time. You can be the world’s best dressmaker but if you’re flat out looking after your kids, how the bloody hell are you meant to actually finish projects in time for your child to wear them? They just have such an annoying habit of growing, don’t they?

This is a constant challenge for me, despite having my own dedicated studio especially for these types of projects. I have worked out a few ways I can fast-track some projects to ensure they’ll be whipped up before the kids outgrow them. I’m still not sewing as much as I’d like to be, but it’s a start. I find when you’re a mother and you want to do something, doing what you can just has to be enough a lot of the time. I’m finding winter is an especially helpful time to make your own garments, as that’s where the savings can really kick in. I’ve mentioned my frozen toilet on facebook recently, so I know some of you have a fair idea of how cold it’s getting out this way!

Opt  for pull-on styles

If you can cast your mind back to last year, you’ll remember this dress:

This was made for Missy 3 (then 2). It’s a peasant style and is fully elasticised; no buttons, zippers or other fastenings. I also like this dress sewn by Fiona over at Inner Pickle. Very simple, but beautiful and versatile. Other easy pull-on styles include skirts, pants made out of knitted fabrics (although there are some good pull-on versions for woven fabrics too if you look for them), t-shirts and jumpers.

Opt for less detail in the pattern

Below is the pattern of a dress I’m currently working on for Missy 3. It does have buttons, but only two. It also has some applique which counts as detail, I know.. But if you look at the style, it’s a very basic shift dress. No frills, pockets, sleeves, etc. I could make the dress itself quickly if I chose not to do the applique. However, this one is cute enough for me to be willing to add that extra detail. I find it’s much easier for me to spend time on details such as hand embroidery where I can sit with it in front of the telly, than to look for more time with the sewing machine. This will be very warm, and I’ll be able to pick up some cheap but cute stockings and skivvies to go under it.

What if you don’t even have time for that?

Well, cheat! Missy 3 outgrew that dress I made in the first picture too fast. It was very roomy, except in the underarm area. It still had loads of  room for a skirt. I didn’t have to cut out a pattern, do seams or hems.. I didn’t have to sew those beautiful tiers again. My plan was to simply chop the top off, make a quick casing and chuck some elastic in. This didn’t take long at all. Not even an afternoon. Missy 10 was in the studio with me. She likes to poke around her grandma’s and great-grandma’s sewing baskets that I inherited, and pore over the treasures inside. And did she find treasure? Reams and reams of white lace! I was in such a hurry to run up that casing and be done, that it didn’t occur to me to use this lace until I saw it.

By quickly adding some to the hem and tiers, this skirt looks relatively different to the original dress. I’ll be stocking up on lots of brick-a-brack like this from now on. It’s a super fast way to revive old clothes. I have a pile of  dresses (from both Missy 10 and 3) next to my sewing machine. Everytime I get a minute, I’m going to hack the tops off, and elasticise the waists. Too easy, and far less wasteful.

I like to attempt to give as many items in this house at least a second life, whenever I possibly can. Dani has shared before how she’s cropped long pants into shorts for her two kids when they were younger, and it seems mad not to!

More basic: sew a rectangle

In other words, sew a simple skirt from scratch. It can be tiered, or a basic elastic-waisted skirt. Even if you came up with your own design, it’s very hard to stuff up if you can sew in a straight line. If you want to go into slightly more detail but retain the simplicity and speed of a quick skirt, you might like the market skirt. I think this looks adorable! The pattern is free, it takes 2-3 hours, and I’m definitely adding it to the repertoire.

Mend.

A great use of a sewer’s time and skills can be the simple act of mending clothes. Remember that? When people would actually mend their clothing rather than just throw it out and buy something new straight away? A while back, I was reading over at Down To Earth and she was talking about this subject, and I realised at the time that it rarely occurs to us these days. We’re all too busy, too rush, rush, rush! It’s not as pleasurable in the creative sense as actually making clothing, but by god it can save money.

We should all take a leaf from Rhonda’s book and start making our clothes last longer. Again, this can be done during tv time.

Learn other clever ways to upcycle clothes

I find Violet Le Beaux to be a briliant resource for this stuff. A lot of her ideas could easily translate to children’s clothing. She’s forever chopping up her clothes and making them into even better ones.

But I like spending time on long projects!

Me too. There’s no reason we can’t still do that. You can always make lengthier, more detailed projects on kids’ items that won’t be grown out of. Think bed linen (patchwork quilts are truly precious, and many children love to hang onto these right into adulthood), cushions, room decor, and so on. With these projects it doesn’t matter so much if it takes you longer to complete them.

If you have a fast sewing tip, I’d love to hear from you.

Yes, this is a pom-pom made from the french knitting kit I mentioned the other day. I’m not overly thrilled with it, because of the technique used to wind the wool on:

Having made pom poms in the past the old fashioned way (winding yarn around cardboard circles with a hole in the centre), Missy 10 and I both thought this would be much easier. It was, but we didn’t like the effect as much as how it turns out doing it the old fashioned way. There was a lot of trimming needed afterward to make it look circular, and we didn’t like how the tied-up centre turned out, either. It didn’t seem as secure. Violet Le Beaux recently made heart shaped pom poms by wrapping the yarn around something rectangular with great results, so it could be a personal preference thing. I’m determined to make some of her cute heart pom poms very soon though, I think they’d look awesome on the end of some beanie ties!

This is a great activity if you have a child who’d like to dabble in wool/yarn craft, but isnt yet confident/interested in learning to knit or crochet. It still provides yet another opportunity to work the fine motor muscles and to problem-solve. It can be pretty tricky cutting those loops of wool, so a child will have to dig deeper than using just average scissor skills! They won’t be able to cut all that yarn in one hit, and will have to learn other ways to do it, such as snipping just a little wool at a time.

Making pom poms with children also encourages them to concentrate on this task for a longer period than many other activities this generation likes to do. I think it’s good to involve children in activities which don’t necessarily provide instant gratification in a matter of minutes. As with most wool crafts, school aged children are given a chance to lengthen their attention span and to learn about patience.

When Missy 10 made her pom poms, she quickly learned that although it’s a simple project, these make great gifts. She made a toy for Sookie the cat, and we both gave some pom poms to Missy 3 to play with. She was over the moon to be able to carry them around and cuddle them. Missy 10 did attempt to decorate one pom-pom into a toy character, but unfortunately, Sookie tore it apart within seconds of its completion. In time, we’ll make more pom-poms, and show a bunch of cool things kids can make either for themselves or others.

In future, I’m thinking we’ll buy one of those plastic versions of the cardboard circles, as a compromise. It’s tedious cutting out cardboard every single time, after all.

This is the perfect weather in Australia to be snuggling up, making pom-poms. I have fond memories of making them as a child, and making funny toys out of them. What did you do with pom-poms when you were a child?

Other reading:

French knitting

Knitting project for children – finger puppets

Teaching kids to knit

Crochet for children and finger knitting

Flower looms

I feel so guilty. I know she would’ve loved her very own birthday party, just like Missy 10 had last year. We were genuinely going to have one, then, argh! Life happened. I hadn’t gotten around to taking her to playgroup yet, so although we know some other little kids around her age, there wouldn’t be too many kids to invite, as we still settle into this town. Also, time really has gotten away on us. I’ve been weighing up my options with regard to visiting my mother, who as some of you would know, has recently had a stroke. She’s now in rehab, and doing much better than was originally expected. I’ve not been able to visit her yet, but want to as soon as I can.

Then, there’s the issue of my partner’s treatment. Would you believe he will be getting admitted to hospital after all, even after my recent announcement that he wouldn’t be? We’ve been making plans for that time, stepping up his appointments, getting extra workers, and so on. It’s basically been consuming all the time we’ve got, lately.

So yeah, not only do I feel guilt about so many things these days (and obviously, wanting to fix my blog back to its former glory or better), but I’m trying so hard to fight the feelings of guilt about giving Missy 3 a great birthday. I’ve been floundering under the pressure of everything going on lately, to the point where the time immediately after my mother’s stroke is just this blur that I don’t remember very well. I do know, though, that I wasn’t much help to anyone. I wasn’t writing down my partner’s appointments, or helping to ensure he was getting to them. It really felt that my brain had packed up and gone elsewhere. It still feels a little like that, but less so.

So, no party this year, and we managed to bugger up the cake as well! Because her birthday was on Sunday and all the shops were closed from Friday onward, we ended up giving her her birthday cake days earlier, because we had to buy a cake, due to not yet having an oven at this house. I was worried about confusing her, but she and the other two kids were happy, so that’s all that matters, and no amount of self-flagellation will make a difference.

Missy 3 and my mother actually share a birthday, too. I’m normally not able to talk to my mother on the phone, because the rehab doesn’t allow it, but they made an exception for her birthday. This was the first time I’d spoken to her since her stroke, so it was good to be able to catch up. Of course, it re-ignited the guilt about not having visited her and round and round we go… But hey, it was good for both of us, and made the day even better.

I made these two cute toys for Missy 3:

A knitted gingerbread man and snake. I know how much she adores the story, and she loves handmade things. I had been working on this toy for a while, and was pleasantly surprised to see how big and cuddly it ended up! As for the snake, I discovered a knitted rectangle in my sewing drawer the day before her birthday. It was for a door snake for blocking drafts that I started making a long time before I had our last two children. Knowing how crazy my daughter is for snakes (she likes to get pieces of wool and make believe they’re slithering all through the house), I quickly fashioned it into a cheerful snake toy.

Well. She hated the gingerbread man! (Keep in mind, I’d shown her the pattern months before, and she’d said she liked it) So, we talked about being polite when getting birthday presents, then gave it to Missy 10 who’s besotted with it. Missy 10 agreed that if fickle Missy 3 changed her mind later down the track, that she’d give it back (she knew I was planning to make one for her in future, also). Missy 3 has since teetered from loving the toy to loathing it. I think she’s just getting used to it…

She really loves the snake, which I find hilarious, given its simplicity and how little time it took to make it!

All in all, despite an insane amount of mummy guilt this year, it was a great day. I just keep reminding myself of the important things in all of this: the five of us got to spend time together as a family (we were expecting my partner to go to hospital before this, so we felt very lucky) and no matter what’s going on, how buggered up our plans have been this year, and how scrambled mummy’s brains are these days, is that she knows she’s loved. Everyday Missy 3 tells me, ‘I love you Mummy, I make you happy. You love me, and you make me happy’. In all of this craziness, I just have to hang onto the stuff that matters the most with both hands and know that that’s what will get us all through this. And you know what? Despite everything that (in my mind) went ‘wrong’, we all had a truly lovely day.

Now, please make me feel better by regaling me with your stories of birthday guilt!

Remember yesterday, when I mentioned Missy 10 was knitting something special to her? Well, here’s the end result! (Well, part of it, actually. She still wants to glue a felt shell and tail onto the back) In case you can’t make out what this is, it’s a finger puppet of a Pokemon character named Squirtle. Yes, she’s obsessed with Pokemon…

She knitted this up in 8 ply acrylic yarn, on 4mm knitting needles. She started off with ten stitches, and just worked a rectangle until it was the length to fit her finger. She ran a needle through the stitches on the needle, then gathered them. She learned that this is how fingers on gloves are often finished off. I showed her how to fold the rectangle in half and sew the seam. Next time, it’ll be her turn to attempt it. Then, to customise her character, she made up some felt shapes, drew some detail onto them then glued them onto the puppet with craft glue. It was very simple, but she thrived on the creative process; deciding what she wanted the puppet to become, designing the features, and fiddling around putting them on.

I also gave her a fabric marker pen to work with before she cut the felt shapes out. This lets her erase what she felt were mistakes, with a wet cloth. I also taught her not to use hot water to do this, as this can set the ink into a stain. The great thing about fabric markers is that the ink on the fabric eventually becomes invisible anyway. It lets the work turn out a lot less grubby-looking than drawing on the fabric with a lead pencil.

I also looked through my own knitting stash, and have put together small stash to start her out with. Some balls of acrylic yarns, a knitting needle measuring gadget (great if you have a pair of needles where the size has worn off, but the needles themselves still work well), tape measure and some knitting needles. All of these things I already had, and either wasn’t planning on using or I already had duplicates of certain items. She was psyched!

We’ve decided to make our knitting together a one hour a day (minimum!) date. It’s nice to knit with someone who shares your interest, and both of us can’t stop chatting excitedly about all our ideas, and about knitting in general. We talk about what high school would be like, events in the past and her feelings on them, her friends, pretty much whatever she wants! Also, as my stress as a carer has really heated up lately, my carer support counselor has been driving home to me the urgent need for me to ensure I give myself self-care, or as it’s more widely known, me time.

I know me time should probably not be spent with my offspring, but if it makes me happy and relaxed, then honestly, why not? I’m very blessed to have the sort of child that even when I need down time, I choose to spend it with her.

She’s interested in making a scarf, next. She’s also looking forward to playing with her new puppet once the glues dries, and decorating her room with it. It’s also something fun we can make for Missy 2 and Mr 4. They love imaginative play, so these will be excellent homemade toys to nurture that.

Can  you think of other handmade toys your school-child or you can make?

Other reading:
Teaching kids to knit: school holiday fun

Science experiments for school aged kids

Crochet for children

Book review: Zombie felties